Admix Expands With Major Google And Spotify Hires

admixLondon-based games monetization company Admix has expanded its commercial team with two major hires in the US and EMEA.

These two appointments are the first part of Admix’s expansion plan in 2021 that will see the company double in size from 40 to 80 staff, following a $8.5 million Series A round in 2020.

Michael Silberberg, based in New York, is joining as VP Global Agency Partnerships after 14 years with Google across three continents, notably in London, where he spent five years as the head of global platforms leadership for WPP, Dentsu Aegis and other agencies.

In his most recent role, he served as the cross-functional leader across the entire WPP-Google relationship. Other previous responsibilities at Google included ecosystem development in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as leading demand generation in the wake of the DoubleClick acquisition.

“Since I was a kid reading William Gibson, I’ve been excited by the prospect of ads engaged with immersive digital environments. I can’t wait to drive growth of Admix’s ecosystem that enables game developers to monetize their virtual environments with in-play engagements for gamers,” he said.

Moreover, Alex Faust is joining as EMEA VP AdSales. Alex spent five years at Spotify, most recently as global leader of its international ad sales and brand partnerships team. Previously he spent seven years at Microsoft across UK and Global roles, most recently as sales leader of the multinational team, at the time part of Microsoft’s Global Accounts and Agency org.

“With gaming top of the league for audience engagement, we are witnessing the next big shift in media. In-play brings real value to all: brands, game creators and audiences, so the road ahead is incredibly exciting,” said Faust.

admix

Silberberg and Faust will build out and lead the commercial teams across EMEA and the US, taking Admix’s new products to market with agencies and brands.

“In 2021 every brand is looking at leveraging gaming to reach their users in new ways, so now is the time for Admix to expand commercially. I couldn’t be more excited to have Alex and Michael join us to lead our efforts with brands and agencies globally,” said Samuel Huber, Admix CEO.

Admix was founded in 2018 and pioneered in-play, a monetization solution enabling game developers to monetise via data-driven product placements integrated inside gameplay, which are non-intrusive and provide advertisers with a new way to engage their audience while they play.

Advertisers can buy this unique inventory 100% programmatically via platforms such as DV360, TheTradeDesk or Xandr and target an engaged audience playing games at scale.

In 2020, the company has seen hypergrowth, its SDK now integrated with more than 300 games, and having seen 800% revenue growth across the year from unprecedented inbound and direct sales.

Admix announces $25,000 User Acquisition Boost program

Admix is offering AR and VR developers $25,000 for user acquisition.

admixAdmix, the in-game monetization solution that recently closed a $7m Series A, is offering developers a chance to win an up to $25,000 boost towards their user acquisition.

To participate, studios need to install the Admix SDK to power non-intrusive ads in their games, and monitor progress over the first six weeks. Admix will handpick apps with the most potential.

Developers can sign up here to the program and boost their acquisition.

Founded in 2018, Admix is a full stack monetization platform for game, esport, virtual reality and augmented reality developers wishing to monetize in a different way. Instead of traditional adverts such as banners or video interstitials, Admix’s SDK for Unity or Unreal enables developers to drag and drop posters, billboards or even 3D spaces in their games.

This ‘virtual estate’ is then sold programmatically to thousands of advertisers, a big differentiator to many competitive services acting as agencies. The Admix platform attracted over 200+ mobile publishers in less than a year, a growth that attracted VCs to lead a Series A round.

Recently, the Admix team has bolstered it’s partnership team with hires from AppLovin and inMobi. This team will evaluate performance of new apps joining the platform, monitoring weekly userbase growth, session time, retention, and monetization vitals via the Admix solution.

They will then award these UA grants to the most promising ones, and help acquire users via a mixture of sources, including their own in-game inventory – something that Admix is currently testing.

“While monetization has been our bread and butter, we have always tried to help the developer ecosystem, by sharing resources, or featuring indie developers. This is the next step, with us contributing financially towards the app success. We couldn’t be more excited about accelerating the next hit games” said CEO Sam Huber.

Although the program is open to all developers, including new apps, the terms and conditions of the offer indicate that Admix is mainly looking for apps with early traction, and strong unit economics, that they can accelerate through funding and UA expertise.

About Admix 

The company launched publicly in November 2018 by revealing the first-ever advertising campaign in VR with National Geographic and Oath (now Verizon).

They have since expanded to traditional games, and less than 18 months later, the company is working with over 200 game developers, including leading casual titles. Admix is doubling its inventory size every 2 months, which attracts over 500 advertisers monthly, including Fortune 500 brands like Amazon, Spotify, Uber and Universal.

>About Samuel Huber

Samuel Huber is the founder of Admix, a monetisation platform for games, VR and AR based in London. Previously, Sam was the owner of an indie game studio, building hyper-casual mobile games before they were cool. Today, Sam regularly speaks about game monetization, advertising and extended reality at conferences across the world.

Mobsta Appoints Its First Chief Revenue Officer

London-based geolocation company Mobsta continues its expansion with Maxwell Brown appointment.

Maxwell

Mobsta UK Commercial Director Maxwell Brown has been promoted to become the company’s first Chief Revenue Officer.

Brown joined Mobsta three years ago from London-based advertiser Collective (Now TI Media) and will be directly responsible for all of Mobsta’s existing sales- and revenue-driving departments. 

While he will continue to work closely with Mobsta’s product and strategy divisions and its client, media-owner partnership and operational teams, he will have an increased focus on P&L and day-to-day management. 

Over the past nine years, Mobsta has matured and evolved into one of the leading plays in the geo and location data space in the UK and was recently recognised by Forbes as one of the leading companies in the space due to its pioneering work with 5G. 

The company was also first to rise to the implementation of GDPR and is expected to make a raft of positive announcements over the rest of 2019.

Talking about Brown’s promotion, Mobsta Co-Founder Darren Kietz said that Brown had proved himself to be a talented leader and an unrivalled contacts book in the industry.

He has been instrumental in ensuring the sales team has become recognised as a thoroughly professional and first rate outfit. More importantly, the number of formal trading partnerships has increased 500% under his lead which is testament to his ability and commitment

Brown is looking forward to bring more value to the company after growing the London office and opening new offices in Manchester.

Thanks to the support of our agencies and clients, I’m looking forward to taking Mobsta into the next phase of growth as we start to harness the effectiveness of operator intelligence with brands.

The news follows a year of growth for Mobsta, which was recently certified by ABC for successfully completing audits and being certified for Good Practice and Standards for digital ad trading.

 

November Summit invites AI startup trailblazers

Best startups in AI sector to battle it out at summit for business rewards

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Leading startups from the artificial intelligence industry will compete for a business boost at the winter edition of Malta AI & Blockchain Summit this November.

The Summit will take place from 7th to 8th November 2019, marking the second event this year for the successful expo. Tickets can be booked here and are expected to sell out.

With strong support from the Maltese government, the event has established itself as one of the world’s leading destinations for the growing sectors of AI, Blockchain and DLT, IoT, and other vertical industries.

AI start-ups will be vying for a place amongst the top ten successful start-ups to be selected to participate in the AI Start-up Pitch, where they’ll take part in a live showdown in front of a panel of the most prominent experts from the AI industry and investors. Taking place on the main stage at peak time during day one of the event, the AI Pitch is always a favourite with the AIBC audience.

With a prize package including a year’s office space, media relations support, digital marketing, and more, one lucky start-up will get a massive head start with their business plans – the stakes could not be higher as the Malta AIBC Summit continues to inspire and nurture the incredible talent appearing on this emerging tech scene.

Of course, all participants are set to be winners, as with such luminary figures from the sector judging the contest, taking part all but guarantees invaluable insights from critical feedback and praise of unique applications for artificial intelligence. And with investors aplenty in attendance, it should be no surprise that many start-ups will come away from the summit with a bright future looming!

100 deep tech start-ups from the sectors of AI, Blockchain, IoT, and Big Data will also showcase their projects and services with a 1×1 stand in the start-up village, benefiting both from 1000s of attendees at the show, as well as online visibility at AIBCsummit.com.

Eman Pulis, founder and CEO of the Malta AI & Blockchain Summit, said.

In this, our third and biggest show yet, we can’t wait to see the range and quality of entrants for the AI Start-Up Pitch. If our previous battles are anything to go by, we will be sowing the seeds of growth for some of the future global brands in the AI space.

 

I couldn’t be prouder that our show is instrumental in bringing together such amazing talent in one venue and I look forward to meeting all those taking part.”

The bi-annual event includes conferences hosted by globally renowned speakers, workshops for industry learning and discussion, an exhibit space accommodating more than 400 brands and much more.

The first Malta Blockchain Summit in November 2018 attracted 8,500 attendees from more than 80 countries, with 300 sponsors and exhibitors, 200 speakers, and 1 AI VIP (Sophia the world’s first robot citizen).